Generally, modern computer applications, including business applications (e.g., enterprise resource planning (ERP) system applications, customer relationship management system (CRM) applications, etc.), implement graphical user interfaces to interact with users. The growing complexity of the functionality embedded in such applications, and the abundance of managed data present a significant challenge for the application developers to design efficient and detailed user interfaces within the limited space of display devices. Usually, users have to scroll and switch between a multitude of screens in their interaction with the applications to perform various tasks and to achieve desired results. In such a complex interface environment, it may be necessary to maintain user's attention to the task by tracking the work accomplished so far and keeping up-to-date plan about the next actions.
Many business applications implement wizards or other types of techniques to guide users during execution of sequences of tasks of a complex process. The tasks to be executed are displayed successively one after another in a graphical user interface (GUI). The execution of one task invokes an interface for execution of a next task. Often, a roadmap is displayed within the GUI to help users keep track of a task flow while accomplishing a complex process. Such roadmaps could be described as plans that contain tasks and dependencies for accomplishment of complex processes. Roadmaps help users to navigate between tasks, inform the users for the executed tasks and the forthcoming tasks, provide additional information associated with the tasks, etc.
Occasionally, the various types of roadmaps that are displayed in GUIs cannot show all tasks of a process within a single screen. Some business processes involve the execution of compound tasks consisting of one or more subordinate tasks. In such cases, the relevant roadmaps need to be displayed as dynamic tree-like structures that could change depending on user input. The navigation through a GUI roadmap with compound elements is necessary to achieve an overview of the tasks and the existing dependencies of a process.
The implementation of roadmaps in graphical user interfaces provides significant advantage to application users during execution of business processes or various system procedures. The roadmaps and other similar GUI tools offer guidance and additional information to facilitate the accomplishment of a particular action. However, users often have to scroll through roadmap controls and navigate between numerous screens to get the necessary information for accomplishment of a particular task, because the relevant data is not summarized in a single screen. This navigation or scrolling could cause inefficiency and uncertainty in user's actions. Thus, the overall user performance could be harmed, as well as the objective and subjective perception for usability of an application GUI.